15 Best Free Database Software for Data Management in 2024

Whether you’re a marketer or software developer, you've probably heard of “database”.

A database is a component of any computer system that stores and organizes data in a convenient form. The concept of database software isn’t hard to grasp as we all use databases consistently.

Imagine an Excel spreadsheet: a collection of data organized into columns and rows. A database operates similarly but usually on a larger scale across many interconnected computers and with more complex forms of data.

But getting your hands on the best database software can be challenging. Numerous options are available, and deciding which is right for you isn't easy. We’ve compiled a list of the top free database software, along with their pros and cons. 

Best free database software

When choosing database software, there is no "this tool is better than that". What you pick depends on your business requirements.

You need to consider several factors, especially when deciding on database software to develop applications. The database software offers robust data management capabilities, including efficient data parsing for streamlined information handling. This includes asking the right questions about a software’s capabilities, ensuring whether to invest in learning a new database and figuring out what you want to achieve with your applications.

If you don't want to pay, plenty of free database solutions are divided into two main groups: relational and non-relational. But, if you haven’t decided on the database software (paid or free) you want to use, here are a few things to consider:

• Complexity: Certain database software can be rather complex and require some technical knowledge. On the other hand, some project management software simplifies managing project-related data.
• Security: Nobody wants their data to fall into the wrong hands. Choosing software that uses cutting-edge data security protocols is essential.
• Integrations: Software integrations allow users to handle data across many applications, such as CRM software or messaging apps.
• Pricing: As we explore some of the top free database software, some applications will have premium plans that provide more features, storage capacity, and more. So choose a database solution that offers the best value for money.

How did we select and evaluate the best database software?

At G2, we rank software solutions using a proprietary algorithm that considers customer satisfaction and market presence based on authentic user reviews. Our market research analysts and writers spend weeks testing solutions against multiple criteria set for a software category. We give you unbiased software evaluations; that's the G2 difference! We didn’t accept payment or exchange links for product placements in this list. Please read our G2 Research Scoring Methodology for more details.

Best free relational database software

A relational database is an organized collection of data elements linked together by predefined associations. These elements are arranged in a series of tables with rows and columns.

Relational database software helps businesses draw meaningful information via linked tables. Users can easily comprehend the patterns and connections or how the tables are related.

The list below contains real-user reviews of the best free relational database solutions on the market. To be included in this list, the developed applications need to be free and:

• Offer data storage
• Structure data in a relational model by defining a table with rows and columns
• Let users collect, update, send, or delete data

*This list is based on G2 data collected in 2024. Some reviews may have been edited for clarity.

1. Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) enables users to build, manage, and expand databases in the cloud. It offers scalable capacity while automating time-consuming administrative tasks, including hardware provisioning, setup, patches, and backups.

It frees businesses to focus on services and provides them with the needed performance and security. Top operational features include the Amazon RDS Management Console, the AWS RDS Command-Line Interface, and straightforward API calls for quick and easy setup. 

What users like best: 

“What I like best about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is its ability to simplify the management of relational databases with automated backups, scaling, and maintenance. This allows users to focus on application development without worrying about the underlying database infrastructure. The seamless integration with other AWS services and robust security features further enhance its appeal.”

- Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Review, Cuong M. 

What users dislike: 

“As a managed service, RDS may not offer the same level of customization and control as self-managed databases, which can be a limitation for certain advanced use cases.“

- Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Review, Nireeksha P. 

2. IBM Db2

IBM Db2 is a relational database management system (RDBMS) that efficiently stores, analyzes, and retrieves data. Companies of all sizes use Db2 for transactional and analytical processes as it offers continuous data availability to keep them running smoothly. Db2 also supports NoSQL features, such as XML, graph store, and JSON.

What users like best: 

"IBM Db2 is a stable platform and integrated relational database management system that leverages high-performance, virtualization, and energy efficiency features. Also, it is supported by different media."

- IBM Db2 Review, Sachin D.

What users dislike: 

"It would be great if we could have support to have a native UI tool to view data and execute queries. The query performance might be slow sometimes for long-running processes.”

- IBM Db2 Review, Vignesh V.

3. MariaDB

MariaDB relieves businesses of proprietary databases' costs, limitations, and intricacy, allowing them to focus on what matters most: building creative, customer-facing apps. MariaDB employs pluggable, purpose-built storage engines to accommodate workloads that traditionally needed a range of specialist databases.

MariaDB provides unrivaled operational agility without losing critical corporate capabilities such as genuine ACID compliance and complete SQL.

What users like best: 

"It's a reliable and open-source database system that doesn't worry the users. I used this database over oracle because of its performance and availability. We can leave an impression on the customers by using the MariaDB database.”

- MariaDB Review, Tabassum K.

What users dislike: 

"It's not convenient for a big stream of data. Further, it performs relatively well in terms of clustering and is constantly updated with new features and functions."

- MariaDB Review, Satyam G.

Best free document database software

A document database (often known as a document-oriented database or a document store) stores data in the form of documents. It's a non-relational (also known as NoSQL) database well-suited for catalogs, user profiles, and content management systems, where each document is unique and changes over time.

Document database software makes it much easier for programmers to save and query data in a database because they employ the same document-model format as their codebase. Flexible indexing, robust ad hoc searches, and analytics over collections of documents are all possible with document databases.

The list below contains real user reviews from the best free document database solutions on the market. In addition to being a free application, to be included in this list, you must also:

• Offer data storage
• Structure data in a document model
• Let users retrieve data

*This list is based on G2 data collected in 2024. Some reviews may have been edited for clarity.

1. Couchbase

Couchbase is a feature-rich database management system for small and midsize organizations and big corporations in various industries, including banking, hotels, energy, information technology (IT), retail, telecommunications, and manufacturing. 

Couchbase is a multi-model NoSQL database designed exclusively for mission-critical applications.It’s a document-oriented distributed database that combines two popular NoSQL technologies: Membase and CouchDB.

What users like best: 

"Easy to get started. We can query over the DB using N1QL, which is very similar to SQL, so it doesn't need extra knowledge to get started. The UI is very clear and easy to understand. Indexing is easy to implement; we can see all the available indices, and while running the queries, we can see which index was picked up. Loved this option.”

- Couchbase Review, Amit P.

What users dislike: 

"Adding authorized users was a bit challenging. However, my team figured it out after some poking around."

- Couchbase Review, Nico P.

2. ArangoDB

ArangoDB is a highly scalable, multi-model database that excels in handling complex, interconnected data structures. As a document database, it's optimized for storing and querying data in a flexible JSON-like format, making it ideal for applications that require rapid development and efficient data management.

What users like best: 

"The mixture of the document, search, and graph models has made our decisions easier. We can limit our stack to use Arango and not have an explosion of vendor systems for each purpose.”

- ArangoDB Review, Kevin B.

What users dislike: 

"Creating Property graphs is easy. However, there is no direct way to create an RDF/OWL graph. RDF triples are useful in machine learning.”

- ArangoDB Review, Amardeep Singh S.

3. MarkLogic 

MarkLogic is an enterprise-grade NoSQL document database renowned for its ability to handle massive volumes of diverse data, including XML, JSON, and RDF. It offers a unique blend of database, search, and application server functionalities within a single platform.

What users like best: 

“MarkLogic is a database platform managing large dataflows and different datatypes. It also stores various structured and unstructured queries along with various dataflows that can be managed under a single device. It helps users for faster indexing and search from large datasets and allows users to handle increasing amounts of data. MarkLogic is compliant with atomicity, isolation, durability, and consistency. MarkLogic can be integrated with various third-party tools and provides confidentiality, integrity, and auditing.”

- MarkLogic Review, Harshit L. 

What users dislike: 

“The license cost is extremely high and so is the amount of space required to store data.” 

- MarkLogic Review, Abdalla H. 

Best free graph database software

A graph database represents and stores data using graph structures for semantic queries, such as nodes, edges, and properties. A graph is an essential element in the system and connects the data items to a set of nodes and edges, where the edges indicate the nodes' relationships.

These relationships instantly connect stored data and, in many circumstances, retrieve it in a single operation. Because relationships are preserved indefinitely in the database, querying them is quick. Graph databases can easily display interconnections, which is helpful for extensively interconnected information.

The list below contains real user reviews of the best free graph database solutions on the market. To be included in this list, not only do you have to be a free application, but also:

• Offer data storage
• Store and structure data in a topographical schema
• Let users retrieve data using a querying language

*This list is based on G2 data collected in 2024. Some reviews may have been edited for clarity.

1. Neo4j 

Neo4j is an open-source graph database that helps businesses make data-driven decisions as it shows the relationships between people, processes, and systems. Neo4j maintains interconnected data by default, making data easier to comprehend. Companies can also use the property graph model to develop machine learning and AI models.

What users like best: 

“Neo4j is the most interactive and easy to use or query tool I have ever worked with. The ciphers are so user-friendly that someone with no knowledge of programming or query languages can get started at any moment, which gives us an edge in explaining the BI analysis and parameters to our customers. Visualizations help you debug and resolve the issues way faster than other DBs. And their integration with most cloud services allows a smooth integration in our applications.“

- Neo4j Review, Gariba G. 

What users dislike: 

“I did not find a lot of resources to help when I got stuck. Also, the setup process was a bit tedious, especially with only the documentation to go off, but I managed to figure out the drivers issues.”

- Neo4j Review, Ian J. 

2. ArangoDB

ArangoDB is a versatile, multi-model database that seamlessly integrates graph, document, and key-value data models within a single platform. This unified approach empowers developers to efficiently manage and query complex datasets. It stores and queries documents, graphs, and key-value data using a single, declarative query language (AQL). Ensures data integrity and consistency across multiple operations.

What users like best: 

“I like that it is very versatile with its multi-model approach; you have the power of a document store with graph search, which essentially allows you to do whatever you do with both document stores and with SQL databases, plus much more thanks to the graph traversal. The AQL language is very intuitive and so quick to learn. Speed is great, too. It is easy to use for prototyping, and it provides you with a good DevOps tool for cluster installation on Kubernetes.”

- ArangoDB Review, Delio D. 

What users dislike: 

"It was a bit of a learning curve on how data is shared over the nodes in the cluster, which is essential to know to get good performance when executing queries. While it's seldom you want to change the name of a collection, that is possible when working with a single standalone server, but it's not possible in a cluster setup.

It's impossible to set preferred service hours for maintenance (upgrades) for the clusters in their cloud service, so unless we initiate upgrades manually, they can start during our primetime."

- ArangoDB Review, Johan S. 

3. Dgraph

Dgraph is a graph database system with a single schema development model. Users can use the tool to develop a schema, deploy it, and receive fast database and API access without writing any code.

Dgraph allows users to choose between GraphQL and DQL, so anyone with no prior knowledge of graph databases to get started.

What users like best: 

"We have opted for the Dgraph Cloud platform for our enterprise as it is highly scalable with low latency. It's excellent for requirements that have real-time transactional workloads as it synchronizes customer records effectively. Data retrieval is hassle-free & we can perform arbitrary depth joins without worrying about our cluster limitations."

- Dgraph Review, Varshini S.

What users dislike: 

"Dgraph requires high RAM to store a graph compared to other offerings. The managed offering doesn't provide all the functionality possible using its Kubernetes cluster. The management has to be done by yourself or the DevOps team of the organization.”

- Dgraph Review, Aditya G.

Best free object-oriented database software

An object-oriented database (OOD) is a system that operates with sophisticated data objects, such as those found in object-oriented programming (OOP) languages. An object-oriented database is structured around objects rather than actions and data rather than logic.

Object-oriented databases treat data as whole objects. Instead of several tables, all information is presented in a single, instantly accessible object package.

An entity is represented as an object in OOP that is maintained in memory. Members of objects include fields, attributes, and methods. Objects have a life cycle that comprises an object’s creation, use, and disposal. Several major OOP languages are available today, including C++, Java, C#, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, and Perl.

The list below contains real user reviews of the best free object-oriented database solutions on the market. To be included in this list, you have to be a free application and:

• Offer data storage
• Store and structure data in object-based data models
• Let users create, store, and update object data models

*This list is based on G2 data collected in 2024. Some reviews may have been edited for clarity.

1. IBM Db2

IBM Db2 is a scalable object-oriented database management system (OODBMS) designed to handle complex data structures and relationships. As an OODBMS, Db2 offers a flexible and intuitive approach to storing and managing data, making it well-suited for applications that require advanced data modeling and querying capabilities.

What users like best: 

"This is great for storing and organizing our client's data and gives the company the flexibility to use files and tables as we modernize our software platform. I use Run SQL scripts the most to access data to test my programs with different data sets. The DB2 database is perfect for the financial and demographic data that is the backbone of our system. The system is very secure, which is perfect for all the sensitive data we have."

- IBM Db2 Review, Chris D.

What users dislike: 

“There are a few things that can be improved. Firstly, the integration options are not readily available. The UI can be improved to assist the learning curve of new users.”

- IBM Db2 Review, Punit S.

2. InterSystems IRIS

InterSystems IRIS is a high-performance data management platform that gives IT specialists the tools to develop machine learning and data connectivity applications. The software also supports database administration for SQL and NoSQL databases. It's primarily designed for organizations that want bespoke apps to handle incoming data quickly and perform real-time data analytics.

What users like best: 

"It's fast, lets you work with many technologies, not just healthcare-related ones, and integrates many cool features into your projects by default. Without doing any extra work, you will get a trace log that allows you to search and redo processes fixing errors. It includes a fast and flexible database with a tree structure that can also be used with regular SQL."

- InterSystems IRIS Review, Jaime L.

What users dislike: 

"I think the biggest downside to InterSystems Iris (and is actually small in comparison to what it could be) is that if you want to add custom functionality, you will have to learn the InterSystems Specific programming language (at least a little) to get it built out. It follows pretty standard programming rules and syntax, though, so it won't take long to get moving with it."

- InterSystems IRIS Review, Victoria C.

3. InterSystems Chaché

InterSystems Caché is a full-featured database system with all the functionality required to run mission-critical applications, including journaling, backup and recovery, and system administration tools, for healthcare, banking and financial services, government, and other industries.

What users like best: 

"It's a swift and secure database and can communicate with relational access, web pages, and object access.”

- InterSystems Caché Review, Eike Scudellari F.

What users dislike: 

"The Studio editor is a bit outdated, and I feel a lack of general information on the open web.”

- InterSystems Caché Review, Andy C.

Best free key-value database software

A key-value database, sometimes known as a key-value store, is a non-relational database that stores data using a simple key-value approach. It stores, retrieves, and maintains associative arrays as a dictionary. Dictionaries comprise objects or records with many different fields that store data.

Keys and values can be anything, from basic to sophisticated compound objects. Key-value databases are highly partitionable and enable horizontal scaling that other types of databases cannot.

When should you choose a key-value database?

• When your application manages many small continuous reads and writes, a key-value database can be volatile. It provides quick in-memory access.
• When preserving essential data, such as client information, storing websites with the URL as the key and the webpage as the value, and storing shopping-cart contents, product categories, and e-commerce product details.
• For programs that don't need to be updated frequently or handle sophisticated queries

The list below contains real user reviews of the best free key-value database solutions on the market. To be included in this list, software must be free and:

• Offer data storage
• Store and structure data as a singular value mapped to a key
• Let users retrieve data

*This list is based on G2 data collected in 2024. Some reviews may have been edited for clarity.

1. ScyllaDB

ScyllaDB is an open-source distributed NoSQL database. It was created to work with Apache Cassandra while delivering much greater throughputs and reduced latencies. It supports the same protocols and file formats as Cassandra but is a completely rewritten implementation with the C++20 language.

What users like best: 

“We have been utilizing ScyllaDB for a long time now. It is a reliable and highly available NoSQL DB as a result of its replication. Ensuring that the data remains there even after multiple nodes fail.

Our in-house team got a great help from ScyllaDB support while implementing the DB due to its supportability with CQL. Best example of data consistency, reliability and performance.”

- ScyllaDB Review, Chanchala B.

What users dislike: 

"The setup and configuration complexity of ScyllaDB, which can be difficult for novices. Furthermore, the documentation sometimes lacks clarity for advanced features."

- ScyllaDB Review, Riya V. 

2. Couchbase

Couchbase is a distributed, NoSQL database that excels at storing and retrieving data in a key-value format. As a key-value database, Couchbase is optimized for fast data access and high throughput, making it ideal for applications that require rapid performance and scalability.

What users like best: 

"It's pretty fast, indexing and all can be done with just one line and it makes the queries execute 100 times faster. And the best thing I find is the documentation. Many times I come across a new use case and am unable to implement it. Then I look for that in the documentation and find all the answers to all the use cases I had. Doesn't perform well when data increases, a lot of times I get ambiguous timeout exceptions. Couchbase UI is also very easy to use."

- Couchbase Review, Amit P.

What users dislike: 

"I was using it with Spring Webflux that is reactive, so while processing data, the load on couchbase goes very high and operations start failing. Would love to see some inbuilt support on this to handle traffic properly.”

- Couchbase Review, Amit P.

3. Aerospike 

Aerospike is a cloud-based, on-premise NoSQL database platform that enables e-commerce, retail, online gaming, telecoms, and advertising companies to simplify multi-site clustering, cross datacenter replication, and load balancing, among other processes, on a single platform. It protects data with encryption, authentication, role-based access controls, and website whitelisting.

What users like best: 

"Aerospike helps store data as cached and the database with complete XDR functionality. It's an excellent database by combining the power of Redis and SQL compliant queries.”

- Aerospike Review, Imran K.

What users dislike: 

"Aerospike can be tricky to size the cluster, although support is beneficial.”

- Aerospike Review, Ido B.

Comparison of the best free database software

If you feel overwhelmed by the wealth of information about free database software solutions, this comparison table will help you with all the essential aspects:

Frequently asked questions on free database software

Q. How do I choose the right free database software for my needs?

Consider factors like the type of data you'll store, the size of your dataset, required performance, scalability, desired features, and your team's technical expertise.

Q. Can I scale a free database to handle growing data volumes? 

Many free database software options offer scalability features, allowing you to handle increasing data loads. However, the specific scaling capabilities vary between different software.

We hope this list of the best free database software takes you one step closer to finding the right solution!

Q. Can I integrate my free database software with my existing applications or tools? 

While many free database software options offer basic integration capabilities, comprehensive integrations might be limited. It's essential to check the specific software compatibility with your existing tools.

Q. What are the key differences between open-source and cloud-based free database options? 

Open-source databases offer flexibility and customization but require more infrastructure management. Cloud-based options handle infrastructure, but you might have limitations in terms of data control and costs. Consider your team's technical expertise and desired level of control when making a choice.

Q. Can I easily migrate data from my existing database system to a free database software?

Data migration complexity depends on the source and target database systems. Some free database software offer migration tools or utilities, but manual data transformation might be necessary. Consider the time and effort required for data migration when making a decision.

So many choices, so little time

Several database management software choices can fit your database administration requirements. Other types of similar software are available for various prices, operating platforms, and special needs. Select the one that best meets your needs.

A good database serves as the foundation for a multitude of business applications. Learn how database management can support your data management strategy.

This article was originally published in 2023. It has been updated with new information.